Posts in the “zen” category

The Providence Zen Center is having a one-day retreat tomorrow. At times like this I sure wish I lived in that area.

A monk asked the master Sengcan: “Master, show me the way to liberation.”

Sengcan replied: “Who binds you?”

The monk replied: “No one binds me.”

Sengcan said: “Then why do you seek liberation?”

From this page about “Soto Zen Buddhist hermit-monk/poet Ryokan.”

The tradition of the Providence Zen Center (PZC) is to always ask yourself, “What am I?” This is a way of maintaining your concentration on the present moment. One variation of this is that when you breathe in as you meditate you should think, “What am I?,” and as you breathe out you think, “Don’t know...”

Another variation is that when you’re doing something active you should incorporate your activity, so when you’re walking you ask, “Who is walking?,” when you’re driving you ask, “Who is driving?,” and so on.

One day I was at the PZC, taking a shower, and asking myself repeatedly, “Who is showering? Who is showering?” During this time someone knocked on the door and yelled, “Who’s in there?”

Instinctively I answered, “Don’t know!”

Then they yelled louder, “WHO’S IN THERE?”

I yelled back, “DON’T KNOW!”

They went away after that. I never did find out if they were testing me again, or actually looking for someone.

Bassui wrote the following letter to one of his disciples who was about to die:

“The essence of your mind is not born, so it will never die. It is not an existence, which is perishable. It is not an emptiness, which is a mere void. It has neither color nor form. It enjoys no pleasures and suffers no pains.”

“I know you are very ill. Like a good Zen student, you are facing that sickness squarely. You may not know exactly who is suffering, but question yourself: What is the essence of this mind? Think only of this. You will need no more. Covet nothing. Your end which is endless is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air.”

~ A story from Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

“It’s all now, you see.”

~ William Faulkner, getting his Zen on (from the book, Intruder in the Dust)

How one man made the decision to become a Zen Master after talking to Zen Master Seung Sahn:

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s mind there are few.”

~ Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

“Our true nature is beyond our conscious experience.”

~ Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

“Our mind should be free from traces of the past, just like the flowers of spring.”

~ Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki (his books on amazon.com)

Someone asked Zhaozhou, “Why did Bodhidharma come from the west?”

Zhaozhou replied, “The cypress tree in the garden.”

~ A Zen koan listed in the book, Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life

“Now I am placing my mind upon the breath.”

I read that sentence in a book recently, and I’ve found it to be a very helpful thing to say to myself as I begin a meditation session.

When you’re meditating in a group, there’s a certain “peer pressure” (for lack of a better term), where everyone agrees that (a) you’re there to meditate, (b) you’re going to start now, and (c) you’re going to stop in thirty minutes or so. But when you meditate by yourself there is no peer pressure, so if you hear an unexpected noise, or your mind starts wandering, well, it’s a lot easier to lose your focus when you’re on your own. That’s why I’ve come to like saying this sentence to myself. I say it when I start a meditation session, or any time I lose focus during the session.

When I say it at the beginning of a meditation session I usually add a time limit, so the entire phrase is something like, “Now I am placing my mind upon the breath, and I will keep it there for the next thirty minutes.” I might add, “After that my mind can wander around willy-nilly if it likes, but for the next thirty minutes it’s just me and my breath.” You can also substitute the word awareness for mind in that sentence, if you prefer.

FWIW, I don’t think I read that phrase in the book, Practicing the Jhanas, but I hand-wrote it in there on page 14, where they start to discuss how to meditate in their style of meditation. I mention this book because it’s my favorite mindfulness meditation book. It is one of the first books I’ve read that makes it very clear that there is a difference between (a) access concentration and (b) everything you can achieve access concentration.

“The koan ‘No’ didn’t immediately change the shape of my life ... it was more that the koan reset my mind to zero.”

A quote from Bring Me the Rhinoceros: And Other Zen Koans That Will Save Your Life.